To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent assessment she has made of the effect of ambulance service reconfigurations on response times. (131672)

No assessment has been made. Annual national health service ambulance trust performance data for 2006-07 are due to be published this summer.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will provide a breakdown of how the £25 million allocated to help improve category A ambulance response times has been spent; and what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of that expenditure. (131673)

Information on how the £25 million capital incentive scheme monies have been spent is not held centrally.

Currently the clock starts for measuring response times when key information has been obtained from the caller. From April 2008, the clock will start earlier, when the call is connected to the ambulance control room. Response time standards will remain the same. The incentive scheme was designed to help ambulance trusts make the capital investments required to maintain response times from April 2008. It is therefore too early to make an assessment of the effectiveness of that expenditure.